The Hidden
by Ria-angelo
Summary: It's 2018, and cameras, spyware, and constant background surveillance have driven the Turtles deep into hiding. They may be 40-something, but that doesn't mean they're ready for total retirement! Desperate times call for desperate measures, but will Mike's plan bring freedom or a cage they'll never escape? (1990s Mirage comics universe because ye olde author is ancient)
1. Chapter 1

_Those who deal Death are close to Death, herself. They must not attract her glance through hesitation, doubt, or reckless abandon – for these are the hallmarks of mortality. Instead, they must walk as one with her shadow, know themselves as shades, embody the truth that they are already dead. This is the only true immortality – to hold the paradox of being Death while walking yet the Wheel of Life. This is the only hope of your survival on the path of Bushido, my sons. – Master Splinter, 1988_

. . .

Leonardo cradles a steaming teacup in his palm, swirls it three times in a circle above the fresh-swept floor, and passes it to me in a swift, practiced motion. I receive the cup and go still again, kneeling on the floorboards that weathered silver in our long absence. The sun's heat pours through the cracked panes of what were once Splinter's windows, warming me right through my shell. The tea's aroma spreads as Leo pours again – Don has his already, so this one goes to Raph on my left. April sent us out with a rice tea with hints of almond, Sensei's favorite, and it brings his memory close, just as intended. Leo fills his own cup, settles the pot back into place on its tray beside the single, smooth riverstone and the flower petals, and we sit. Four together. Home in a way that feels rare and precious and fleeting and true.

This was where he lived with us, those few years of fragile peace.

This was where we came after breaking. Where he re-gathered us, helping us heal.

This was where he waited while we returned to New York and closed the circle of grief and vengeance.

This was where we came after ending the life of his master's killer, Oroku Saki… where our Master helped us ground ourselves back in the world of the living, and cleanse our spirits once more.

This was where he retreated, in time, and told us his love for us, and faded, and chose to move on.

This is where we honor him now. Thirty years on.

We raise the cups on silent signal and drain them as one.

. . .

The farmhouse is full of echoes, bare as it is of furnishings and rugs. It's hot and dusty, too. We don't disturb things when we travel, and that includes opening windows that might trigger some local to realize the place isn't so undisturbed. But who cares, when you can't stay? Our packs are ready. The sun's set, leaving things darker than they ever get back in the City. Shadow's meeting us with the van at the pull-off in 20 minutes.

_This is it. Nine months of prep, coming down to the Big Reveal._

_Master Splinter, is this the right path? Am I doing the right thing?_

"Hey, Mikey – time to roll," Don says, passing the kitchen on his way out the back door. Then he pauses, leaning into the doorway to frown at me. "What's up?"

_Too early to tell_. I go back to twisting the dead knobs of the gas range on, off, on again. The pilot hasn't been lit since the 20th century. "Just thinking."

_It feels like we were here just yesterday… But life'll never be simple like it was back then._

Leo appears at Don's shoulder, taking in the dusk-darkened room and my brooding in one swift glance. "Can't stay, Mike. Not possible. There's too many – "

"Too many ghosts. I know," I snap. "Staying's not what I'm thinking about anyway - fearless leader," I add, the old nickname softening my tone. I'm not up for this particular Leo lecture (as if we haven't hashed it all out a million times), but there's no need to harsh his mood.

In fact, I need his mood good.

Because what I'm thinking of IS the ghosts, and how much I miss them. All of them. The ghost of the farmhouse. Of the pond. The woods and the wild, and what they all used to be. Of Master Splinter. Casey and April, before the gray hair and the worry lines. Shadow, when she was still just a lil' stinker, no idea how much her great green uncles were gonna freak up her life. I miss just _seeing _them all, together, and more than once every month or three. More than anything, I miss the FREEDOM.

You miss stuff that much, you can't help banging your head against the wall of years, trying to come up with some way to get it all back. And that's what I need Leo on happy-mode for.

Raph comes by then, shoves his way past our brothers and smacks my pack against my plastron. "Gear up, bud," he says, grabbing me in a one-arm bear hug _(turtle hug?) _before heading out into the weed-grown yard.

I needed that. I know he gets it, how hard this all is, even if he doesn't know the details quite yet. It's enough to shake the doubts loose, get me moving.

_Master, guide me well._

We head for the rendezvous.

. . .

Some things haven't changed. Hours of riding in the back of closed vans. Traveling mostly at night. Wearing winter clothes and full-face motorcycle helmets, hijabs, Halloween masks whenever we're exposed. In the flickering, tracking lights of the peepholes we've built into the side of Shadow's van, I can just make out my brothers' faces, quiet and waiting, and the reflections off our helmets' tinted visors, each one within easy reach.

What's changed in the past three decades is we're _always _exposed. The second we venture out of our rathole (sorry, Master), we're never even close to safe.

Everywhere has cameras, now, from highways to deer trails, alleyways to dashboards, rooftops to maintenance tunnels. Out here in western Mass., most of it's wildlife cams. Back home, every former refuge is covered with security cameras, vloggers catching montage footage, tourists posting shots of their authentic New York pizza, City crews monitoring tunnels for anything from clogs to crackheads. There's motion detectors. Wi-fi trackers. Infrared sensors. Even satellites and drones – constant eyes in the sky.

We're basically on underground home detention now, 24/7/365. And forget about staying connected. No more websurfing for us. Leo's paranoia saved our butts from so many tech-tracking close calls, even Don and Shadow stopped complaining about not getting to have Internet ANYTHING anymore.

A mutant can't catch a break.

The hiding has to be _All. The. Time_. We've moved dozens of times, always going deeper, farther out. Growing up, once we earned Sensei's trust, we used to visit the surface every day, sometimes several trips, and of course we had full roam of the tunnels. By 2010, we were sweeping constantly for bugs. Topside trips dropped to once a week. Now, we barely ever see the surface. It's an underground rendezvous maybe once a month, in full costume, with a rotating cycle of one or two of our human friends, different locations every time, coordinated using paper and pencil and our own private code. ("Anything spoken aloud can be overheard," April warns us. Sure, the audio taps are supposedly just to target more ads at the humans, but it's no secret that others are always – ALWAYS – listening.)

We used to make fun of people who took their paranoia to this level, back in the days when ham radios and phone wiretaps were the stuff of crappy spy flicks we'd watch from our hiding spots in our favorite low-end movie theaters. Now? We, the world's four ninja-est, mutant-est turtles, happened to live long enough to wind up in the most scrutinized, overexposed, hypercontrolled dystopian era ever. We stick to reading books (paper only). We listen to records on turntables Don's picked over to remove most of the electronics, using headphones so the vibrations don't travel too far. I write stories on a laptop that's so old Shadow had to buy special conversion equipment to download off its disks (she sells the work topside under her name to help cover the costs of keeping us in supplies). Our friends ride old-fashioned pedal bikes on their visits to us, use landlines, and don't have any post-2000 electronics in their homes, all in hopes they won't be tracked. We've never even seen their homes, except in the disposable Polaroids they bring sometimes. We spend our days training, making art, figuring out how to stay healthy without light or fresh food more than once a month.

It's miserable. We signed up to be ninjas, not monks! We're not only rats in a hole, we've been hiding so long we're forgetting how to live. And the hole's getting tighter with no way out. But what can we do when every way out leads to literal dead ends?

The core principle of ninjahood is there are always options, though. Splinter taught us that ninjas are, above all else, flexible – and he didn't just mean us doing the whole bendy carrot thing during warm-up exercises. It means being able to think our way out of a situation. Any situation. It means living like we always have a choice. In fact, the great big boogeyman for us has never been some giant monster to pummel – it's been getting Captured and stuck in cages with no choices left, including over whether or not we keep breathing. (I mean, Leo could probably take himself out even if he was trussed up and half out of it in a giant empty cube – just order his heart to stop beating or something. Splinter made sure we knew that was a thing that's possible. But the will to actually do that? Not something I aspire to be capable of. I guess that's a choice, too.)

All of this to say, living on the ever-shrinking edge of a hostile world where we don't have any options is close to the Worst Thing That Could Happen. And if that edge shrinks any smaller, we might as well be in cages for all the living we get to do.

Shadow takes the bend of the on-ramp just south of NoHo, and we all lean to keep our balance on the benches. The too-bright LEDs from the highway's light poles pierce through the holes in the van walls, sweeping us with their beams. It's enough to read my brothers' expressions, and none of them are cheerful. It's not exactly a good feeling to get out of our cage for a few hours a year and then pack ourselves back in.

As soon as we straighten out, Don reaches over and frees a milk crate from its bungee cords near the front wall of the van. We should probably delay until we hit the darker stretch of 90 in northern Connecticut (less chance of witnesses if Leo completely blows his gasket), but a Turtle can only take so much. That crate holds paper bags sending irresistible aromas of fresh, hot, salty fast food through the cabin. French fries have a half-life that's never yet survived a trip from takeout window to tunnel home, so this is a treat we can't pass up. Don bangs a fist twice ("thanks!") on the metal panel separating us from the front cabin, and Shadow knocks back: "All good."

I gotta admit it tastes good even though I don't have the best appetite at the moment. Three minutes later, we're all licking our fingers and tossing crumpled wrappers at each other. Don swats a Raph-special (wrapper deluxe with extra ketchup) away and turns back to the crate to see what other goodies Shadow's packed for our ride back.

I hear Sensei's voice in the back of my memory. _Breathe, Michelangelo._

There's just one bag at the bottom of the crate. Green plastic. It's got a flat, rectangular parcel inside, wrapped in tissue paper and tied with twine. I appreciate Shad's sense of drama, but my stomach's already doing things I don't think internal organs are designed for.

"What've we got?" Leo asks.

"Feels like paper." Don tugs the knot free, and Raph pulls out a mini-flashlight as the wrappings come off.

There's a collective inhale. Me, too. I haven't seen the art yet - just the story, of course - and I'm relieved to see it's good. Damn good. Terrifyingly good, when it's your own mug and your closest loved ones' staring back. But there we are, in living color – glaring through a crowd of weapons on the cover of Shadow's printout of comic book issue #1: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2: Leo**

There's a Moment just before conflict that tells you everything. Who will win. _How _they'll win. Legends tell of masters who never lifted a blade in battle. They met the enemy's eyes, and the weaker fighter conceded defeat. No bloodshed. Just divide the spoils.

Don uncovered that stack of pages and there we were: in a Moment. Those were _our_ eyes staring back. Drawn, painted, printed. Inescapable. We'd been _seen_.

_Discovery means Death! _

When a Moment hits, you use the quarter second you have to scan before reaction. The weak glow of the flashlight showed me enough: Raph and Don stunned, Mike tense. Apprehensive? So Mike _knew _something. Follow up later. Think. Shadow delivered this bomb. We can trust Shadow. She would have warned us immediately if she thought we were in danger, so she couldn't think this dangerous. _(How can she not!?)_ Some stranger had drawn this thing, obviously, but a single person can be contained. And this was printer paper, not an actual book, so it may not have been published yet.

_There's still hope. _

Now for the _how_. Raph was grabbing for the stack of papers, shouting something that consisted mostly of expletives. Don was shuffling through page after page of comic book panels. There we were, over and over again: fighting in alleyways, jumping rooftops, talking with - _was _that _supposed to be Splinter? _\- and battling ninja we defeated decades ago. Shadow wouldn't have dropped this on us where we couldn't ask questions...unless she knew someone back here would have answers.

I glanced over. Mike's eyes were already on mine. Wide. Anxious.

Determined.

I sighed. "Gonna let us in on what this is all about, Mike?"

Raph shut up. Don's gaze jumped from me to our brother. "You knew about this?"

Mike nodded.

"_Well?_" Don yelped.

"Okay." Mike shoved his palm hard across his face, yanked on the knot of his bandanna and huffed. "We all want out of the cave of perpetual silence. Right? We all know there's nowhere, really, left to run that's not just another pit. Unless we trigger some sort of a global EMP to knock civilization back to square one, we're stuck in hiding. Forever."

"A global EMP isn't technically possible, but a - "

"'Sokay, Donnie, I don't actually wanna blow up the world. I don't even want to interrupt anybody's cable! Thing is, we've always assumed if we get exposed, we're turtle targets. Someone's gonna track us down and put us in a cage - more like separate cages - and that's it. We end up as pets or lab rats. (Sorry, Master.)"

"Get to the point." Raph said, punching his shoulder with a little more force than necessary.

Mike grunted, but didn't complain. "So I had this thought. What's the one thing missing from all our scenarios?" He looked around at us. Don shrugged. "_Leverage_. Allies. We need allies with power. _Lots _of allies. _Lots _of attention, from people who know us. Us, as Leo, Don, Raph, Mike, not - not as a bunch of freaky shadows on someone's backyard security cam. People who care about us, even if they haven't met us yet."

I put it together.

"You're back to playing Superturtle," I guessed. Images flashed through my mind. Mike, age, what, six? Seven? Running around the den with a torn red T-shirt he'd scrounged somewhere tied around his neck for a cape. _"Superturtle to the rescue!"_

Don nodded, slowly. "Superheroes. A comic book adventure. A way to tell our story, so people can start to like us...before they know we're actually here?"

Raph turned away.

"It only works if it's big," Mike said. He gestured at the pile of papers. "This is a mockup, a pitch. We've got to get it in front of the right eyes at the distributors. We can't go through a traditional publisher, they'd take too much control, wouldn't let the story be - well, be about us."

"Who's 'we'?" Don asked. "Mike, how far has this gone?"

"Just me and Shad and her college buddy, Khary. He's the artist. Hella talented, huh? And a really good guy. He's done some work in animation and comics already. He knows some big people.

"Shadow didn't tell him the truth about us at first, just gave him the characters and the backstory. After he'd really gotten into it, she let him in on the details, showed him enough to prove she's not crazy. But he doesn't know everything. She handles the story, he just does the art."

Raph stood up, switched off the flashlight, and went to the back of the van, where he stood bouncing his knuckles lightly off the side wall. _Better the van than a brother_, I thought. _Still. If he gets frisky, someone on the highway might start to wonder what kind of van carries a loose rhinoceros in the back_.

"How far have you thought this through?" I asked, my eyes adjusting to the pencil-beams of highway lights tracking across Mike's knotted fingers.

"Enough. Next steps. You give the okay, we post the mockups to Khary's contacts and hope we get published. Stay low, let it build momentum and audience, maybe do some merchandising. Then we hit for Hollywood - a series, if we can pull it off. Maybe even a movie. It's gotta be _big_, guys. Then we can start breaking cover."

"Raph," I interrupted, picking up a low growl from behind us. "Thoughts?"

"Several," he snapped, in a flat voice that instantly made the rest of us go tense. We all knew that tone, though none of us had baited him badly enough to hear it in years. It means Raph On The Edge. It means serious danger for anyone blind enough to push him one step farther. It means the kind of tight rage that makes Raph an unbeatable ally in battle - and a serious threat to anyone standing too near, no matter whose side they're on.

"You didn't run this by us," he stated.

"I should have." Mike's voice was soft but clear.

Raph snarled something I didn't catch. Then: "You didn't think about Shadow."

Silence.

"You want us to get popular. Be on a bunch of kid stuff, strutting around on the big screen? What's gonna happen when some of those Foot soldiers we didn't take out back in the day catch their grandkids reading this thing? What about every other loser we tussled with over the years? What about all those cops and government spooks? You think they're gonna go: 'Oh, how cool, somebody's finally makin' a buck off those friendly little green guys. I wonder what they're up to now'? NO!"

Even I jumped as Raph's fist slammed the van in punctuation.

"No," he repeated, "they are going to come looking, and they are going to come fast. They are going to go straight to the source, which will be Shadow and her 'hella talented' little friend, who just got SUCKED into something that could very likely get him and everyone he cares about very much dead. And these people are not going to 'start to like us' because of your friendly neighborhood comics campaign."

"We talked about it," Mike said. His voice was still quiet, but firm in a way that caught me by surprise.

"You TALKED about it."

"Yes. Shadow's in, Raph. She's always been in. And she's known Khary a long time. She wouldn't just put him in this position if he wasn't - special. Able to protect himself from some of the kind of trouble this could bring. He's more than a hired pencil. Besides. He's a friend."

Raph snorted. "This is not how we treat friends."

Mike got to his feet, but his voice stayed steady. "Raph, that's exactly how we treat our friends. They risk their lives for us every time we meet. They give up the basics of topside normalcy every single day. And you know the four of us can't keep living this way. If I thought the Utroms would come back and whisk us away someday, sure. I could put up with a few more years in underground prison. But, damn it, Raph. I can't live anymore in a hole without hope. And I can't ask our friends to keep risking their lives for us as long as we live." He took a deep breath. "And you can't, either."

Raph didn't answer. We heard him bang a few times on the wall in the shadows of the corner, then drum his fingers, softly. Don hummed something thoughtful and affirmative. I could hear Mike rubbing the knot between his brows, waiting for the next question, swaying with the movement of the van.

But I knew it was over. The Moment had passed, no bloodshed.

Just divide the spoils.

"It's a good idea," I announced. "Not a great idea. We need to address timing, communication, security, contingency plans. Raph's right, Mike - you should have told us sooner. We're behind the 8-ball, now. But if Shadow really is on board with this, I don't think any of us should try to stop her from seeing it through. She's grown, and she's smart. She knows this is our only way forward."

I watched Mike's expressions of surprise and gratitude chase each other in the wash of highway light. He nodded.

Don straightened the papers on his lap, stared into space for a long moment, then gave us a thumb's up.

"A'right," Raph grunted, finally, turning his shell to us and dropping into a muscle-burning squat. The equivalent of taking a walk to calm down. Good enough.

"Twenty minutes," I told them. "Think of every way this could go spectacularly wrong and how we can work around it to keep our shells attached for another year."

Don let out his breath and handed me the comic. "Master Splinter, guide us well," he said.

He leaned over and knocked another "thank you" on the front wall. Then we all went quiet to start figuring out how not to die.


End file.
